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Australia needs a carbon budget: report

Nick Perry

Australia needs a well-defined, long-term strategy if it is to meet emissions targets and contribute fairly to global efforts to tackle climate change, a new report says.

A national "carbon budget" would clearly set out the exact amount of greenhouse gas emissions Australia would need to cut by 2050 to avoid the worst impacts of a hotter climate.

The Climate Institute says such a budget is needed because the impacts of climate change are not determined by a single year's worth of emissions, but the total released over time.

Without a clear idea of where Australia is heading in the long run, there's a risk short-term targets won't meet the end goal - chiefly that average global temperatures don't rise by more than two degrees.

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More than 100 countries have agreed to try to meet that target, but experts say at the current rate global warming is expected to raise temperatures by four degrees above pre-industrial levels by 2050.

The Climate Institute, in its latest report out on Monday, warned the Climate Change Authority (CCA) against setting a myopic carbon budget as it would require more "dramatic and draconian" action in future.

"Like any budget, the more you spend early on, the less you have for later," the institute's deputy head Erwin Jackson said in a statement.

"Defining Australia's fair share of the global carbon budget is a complex task, but it is critical if short-term targets are to be set with clear reference to avoiding dangerous climate change."

The CCA, the independent body that advises the federal government on climate policy, must provide recommendations for a national carbon budget by early next year.

The Climate Institute has offered several long-term strategies Australia could adopt to carry its share of the burden, which has grown at around twice the global average in recent decades.

To have a decent chance of meeting the two-degree target, global emissions can't exceed 1500 billion tonnes of carbon, the report found.

If Australia was to play fairly, that would mean setting a national carbon budget of 8 billion tonnes of emissions from 2010 to 2050.

At current emission levels, this budget would be exhausted in just 15 years.

The government has committed to a minimum target of reducing carbon emissions by five per cent by 2020, and 80 per cent by 2050.

But Mr Jackson said at that rate, by 2050 Australians would have released four times as much carbon emissions as the average person globally.

"Alongside the domestic transformation to a low pollution economy, credible pollution budgets can boost international momentum to address an increasingly hostile climate," he said.

Australia's emissions efforts don't end in 2020 and would continue to test the credibility of all major political parties, he added.